Francis Ona

Francis Ona (1953-24 July 2005) was the leader of the secessionist national liberation movement, the Bougainville Revolutionary Army, and the self-proclaimed monarch of Me'ekamui.

Biography
Francis Ona was born in 1953, and he emerged as the leader of a group of angry landowners on the island of Bougainville that were opposed to the harmful environmental impact of the Bougainville Copper Mine, and in 1988 he formed the Bougainville Revolutionary Army to fight for independence for Bougainville from Papua New Guinea. Ona and his group controlled 90% of the island, and 15,000 people died in the Bougainville Civil War, mostly due to illness and starvation. Ona never accepted the 1997 ceasefire, and he died in 2005 of malaria after claiming to be the king of Me'ekamui.